


Six Octobers

by DarlaBlack



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Canon Divergence (post-Requiem), F/M, Fluff and Smut, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 22:08:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16250765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarlaBlack/pseuds/DarlaBlack
Summary: One decade, six small windows into a shared life.





	Six Octobers

**October, 1996**

Two things happen that alter his life and the path he envisions for it. The first is that they are both somehow, with the same case, made aware of a possible future in which there are things like neighborhood baseball games, homes away from the city, quiet places with tall grass, children. Her children maybe. His children.

(“What about your family, Mulder?”)

He feels strange. He touches her back. He calls her mom. He doesn’t know why he does these things when there are monsters under their noses and in his real life he can barely keep his fish alive. But he sees her with him for the first time in those hushed daydreams of another kind of life in some distant universe. He wonders how she might fit, and if she might like it. A quick, guilty image pulses behind his eyes: he imagines holding an infant—a thing he has never done—on the porch of some little house. The child feels heavy in his arms, like the full weight of this impossible future, smells of powder and milk. In thinking this, something hot ignites inside him. Hot like guilt, because this is not his life, nor can it be; the inverted structure of this way of being disorients him. And yet. He dreams Scully beside him on the porch, wearing blue jeans, reading. Her fingers press between the pages of a book to hold her place, and she looks up. Her smile undoes him. She is still rounded from having carried the child: her edges softened, long hair swept up off her shoulders. What mad vision is this?

Then the thought is gone, swallowed in the gore and loss of this terrible case, as he should have expected. There is no space untouched by blood and sorrow that he has ever known. Andy Taylor is a myth and figment, an impossibility, another good and pure thing destroyed. Within hours, the reckless deputy follows into darkness. The threat here is not new violence encroaching, but old brutality irrupting from below: it has always been. It is the furious revolt against a way-of-life challenged.

Mulder and Scully shake their heads at the cruelty of it, then drive back through Pennsylvania’s falling leaves. But the beautiful vision, like a seed, has been planted down in the soil of his deepest, most hidden wanting. It germinates.

The second thing that happens, too soon after, is that he almost loses her. He imagines her a vacant zombie after Schnauz would have stabbed her brain with an awl. He imagines her dead, maybe, from a bad procedure done wrong. The two images war: soft Dana on the porch (the infant cries and he kisses its belly, tickles its feet) and her body among the brown leaves of the forest floor. Their lives veer always, ever closer, toward the second. He knows this and he hates it.

In their hotel, when she has scrubbed the duct-tape glue from her cheeks and chin, when she has showered and changed into pajamas, and sits on the end of her bed, she asks him to sit with her. She does not cry. She slumps against him, and he wraps his arms around her.

She tells him, “Thank you.”

He says, “I’m sorry.”  

And then he stays with her until she falls asleep. He lays his hand on her back as she tucks beneath the blankets. He listens to her breathe and lets himself think about that other life. It is the two things together that make him realize what she could be to him, were he not so incapable of love. The two things make him want something else, something dangerous, for the very first time.

 

**October, 1997**

When she begins to look herself again—no more dark circles under her eyes, bones not so visible—he takes her out of her apartment: “To breathe again,” he says. On the first chilly Saturday, he calls her around nine in the morning, asking if she has hiking boots. He brings her coffee and, shy, kisses her on the cheek in the doorway. She blushes hard, so unsure of what this means now.

“You look so good,” he says, and again she doesn’t know what to think. She looks good because she doesn’t look dying? Or she looks good because she  _looks good_.

“Where are we going?” She asks.

He waggles his eyebrows at her. “You’ll see.”

They drive for about an hour, headed north and west into Maryland. He is quiet for the ride, and she tries to read his expression but he gives nothing away. She feels full with life, with the promise of their adventure together, here with him in the car, driving into a mystery. She can’t help but smile.

He takes them to Patapsco Valley State Park, where he pulls in to a wooded area with trails heading in several directions. The air stings her nose and makes her zip her jacket fully. She still has trouble getting warm some days.

“This is the one,” he says, nodding at a trail head, touching her shoulder to lead the way.

“Mulder,” she says. “What are we doing?”

“We’re hiking,” he says. “Not a tough hike, less than a mile. I want to show you something.”

She follows him. Because she always follows him. Because for a while she couldn’t, and feared she never would again, but now she can and she will. Because she loves him. This is what she’s come to know fully as she stared down her own death and readied herself to leave him. What she’d thought was,  _When I die, it will be without getting to show him how much I could have loved him_. She’d tried, though—she’d offered him the very last thing she had to save him, which was her death. She would have taken every bad thing from him if she could, every hurt and regret and guilt and accusation and anguish, taken them with her when she went, knowing she was leaving him with something worse in her absence. But he had refused to lay the weight of his pain on her. And in the end, instead, he’d saved her.

The trail is relatively flat. Still, she notices that he watches her steps: careful, just a tad too protective, his hand hovering whenever there is a rock or root. “I’m fine, Mulder,” she assures him. “I’m really really fine.”

He nods, his smile apologetic. “I know, it’s just…”

She smiles too, a little sad. “Yeah.”

They come to a fork and he leads her to the right, toward the sound of something she can’t quite identify. The smell is different too. Mustier. Wet. Then, a clearing in the trees, and there it is: the river, the changing leaves, a waterfall.

“Oh my God,” she says. It’s like a painting, the sun on the river and the reflection of gold and yellow and red. She turns and sees that he’s smiling, but he’s not looking at the water. He’s looking at her. “It’s beautiful,” she tells him.

“Do you like it?” He asks. “I found this spot one day, a few years ago in the fall. I thought of you when I saw it.” He looks away, sheepish. “We’ve been busy in the fall since then.”

She thinks back— _a few years ago in the fall_. October three years ago, she was missing and he was… lost. This is what her mother has told her, from what she saw of him. He came here when she was gone, and he was thinking of her in all this color, and now he’s almost lost her again. But she will live this time, too, and he wants her to see it.

She reaches out her hand. He takes it quickly. “I love it,” she says. “Thank you.”

He squeezes her fingers, then tugs her toward him, pulls her into a long, slow hug. His heartbeat thrums through the fabric of his sweatshirt against her cheek, and he is solid and real and good in her arms. He smells of himself and she wants to keep this small thing forever, this moment of his utmost caring. “I would have died too, I think,” he whispers into her hair. She squeezes tight his waist, shakes her head  _no_  against his sternum.

“Oh, Mulder.” It is all she can say, because she knows it is probably true. He palms the back of her hair while his other hand grips her waist. His lips linger there, on her head.

After long minutes, they turn to watch the leaves and the water and the bluest sky.

**October, 1999**

They are new at this, treading a slow march forward into some unknown terrain. Their devotion has always been fierce, but unspoken. It feels strange to him now, bringing it out into the open, learning to touch her with something more than just respect and care.

“You don’t have to,” she assures him. “It’s not a big deal.” But by the way she says this, he knows it  _is_  a big deal, having dinner with her mother.

“I want to, Scully. It was good of her to ask.”

She searches his face for a moment. “She just wants to see that you’re okay. She was worried. When I told her.”

Scully is sitting on his coffee table, facing him on the couch, changing his bandages one last time. Gentle, she checks the pink scars at his temples with her fingertips. “Okay?” She asks.

“Yeah,” he says, voice suddenly tight. Her proximity is raising his blood pressure, the smell of her musky shampoo and body lotion. She runs her fingers through his hair in a way that doesn’t feel doctorly, but her face is pure concentration.

“You may not need the bandage, actually. It’s healing well.”

He smiles at her. “Freedom from the gauze headband? But I was going to go as a mummy for Halloween.”

She smirks. “Just be careful with it.”

She’s about to get up and throw away the cottony strips she’s just removed, but he stops her with a hand on her arm. “Hey,” he says, and she looks at him. He touches her face with his hand, watches it grow pink, can practically hear her heartbeat. He leans forward and places a kiss on her mouth. Just a peck, really, a little press of skin to skin. He pulls back and says, “Thank you.”

“For what?” She asks, and now it’s her voice that is strained.

He shrugs. “For fixing me.”

He watches the hesitation on her face—just a bare moment of it—and then she moves in to kiss him again, fuller this time, her fingers coming up to rest on his shoulders. And Jesus help him, this time with tongue. His hands go to her waist, under her suit jacket but over her top. It is not their first kiss, but their movement toward each other has been slow so far, especially after his injury. He senses in her now, though, the full breadth of her desire, and it knocks his sense clear out the window. Head injury or no head injury, he will lay this woman down and make love to her the moment she says the word.

But she presses her hand against his chest and pulls back, then covers her mouth, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she says.

He can’t help but laugh, squeeze her hip, shake his head. “Sorry?”

Her face is red. “I said to be careful. You—you need to be careful.”

“How careful?” He knows what he must look like, the depth of lust she must see in his face, because she reddens further.

“I—“ she licks her lips, and he almost groans. “No, um…” If it’s possible, she blushes even more. “No vigorous exercise or… activities that increase your heart-rate. For another week or so.”

He looks at his watch, to the day marked where the  _3_  would be. “It’s Tuesday,” he says. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

Her eyes go wide. She swallows hard and nods.

-

On Friday they visit Maggie, who feeds them and fusses over the tiny scars on his head. “Oh, Fox, I’m so glad you’re okay,” she says. She’s even made him his favorite food: rosemary chicken and mashed potatoes.

“How did you know?” He asks, and Scully blushes.

After dinner, he emerges from the bathroom and hears the two women talking. When he realizes it’s about him, he pauses at the door to the kitchen. He knows he should feel guilty, but their words make his heart pound, make him smile despite himself.

“It’s just that he’s so clearly in love with you, Dana. I mean, I knew that years ago, but it’s so obvious now.”

“Mom, please! We’re not… We’re just… I don’t know what we are. Just please don’t pry.”

Later, when they’re slipping on their jackets and getting ready to go, he sweeps her into a kiss that he feels with his whole body. Though startled at first, she relaxes against him, touches his face, arches her back so their bodies are flush. When he moves back, she is panting and glassy-eyed. “He  _is_  in love with you, Dana,” he says, and her mouth drops open. He nuzzles her nose with his and whispers into her lips, “Four days.”

When Maggie says goodnight, she has half a smirk and a knowing look in her eyes. He winks at her on his way out the door.

**October, 2000**

In a pumpkin patch in northern Virginia, Mulder holds up a monstrosity for her inspection, boots already muddy from his trek to find the very best one.

She frowns. “Where will we put it?” She carries two smaller gourds already, one in each hand, for the dining-room table.

“On the porch,” he says.

“Mulder, we don’t have a porch.”

“Ah, not yet.” He walks over to her awkwardly, balancing the weight of the pumpkin in his arms, and bends to kiss her forehead. “But I have a good feeling about this next house.”

“It seems too far,” she says.

He shrugs. “We could make it work.”

They’ve been looking tentatively for a house together, somewhere outside the city and the worst of the suburbs. If he had his way, he’d take them all the way out to the boonies, but the thought makes her a little anxious. “What about work?” She keeps saying. “There are more important things,” he always replies.

Now, as they head back to the tractor-pulled wagon that will take them from the field to the farm’s store and restaurant, he tucks his black sweater over the pumpkin that’s pressed to his abdomen. “Hey look. Guess who I am?” He arches an eyebrow dramatically and says in a mocking voice, “Mul-der, that sofa doesn’t go with the loveseat. Mul-der, there’s no such thing as aliens.”

She is six months pregnant and her belly is finally rounding out, stretching the shirt beneath her jacket in a perfect little sphere. She looks down at herself, then at him, and whacks him with one of the gourds. “I hope you got your stomach all muddy.”

He lifts his shirt to look, and sure enough, there’s a smear of gritty brown from the bottom of the pumpkin at his belly button. He rubs at it, but only makes a mess, and gives her a look. She’s biting her lips together to keep from laughing at him.

At the little country store, they pay for their pumpkin and gourds. “Do you want coffee?” He asks.

“I don’t think they have decaf,” she says. She’s already had her daily cup of regular.

“Hot cider, then?”

She nods. “Just a little. Too much sugar.”

In the car they sip their hot drinks. He drives while she navigates, watching the houses grow farther apart and the trees taller. “Here,” she says. “I think it should be the next driveway.”

“The realtor said there’s a gate.”

There is—a long silver gate that is already pushed open. They bump up the long driveway to the small farmhouse where the realtor is just getting out of her car. Mulder glances over to gauge Scully’s reaction.

“It’s cute,” she says, imagining their pumpkin on the wide wrap-around porch, imagining their child toddling around the yard, collecting leaves and bugs and rocks. “So much space.”

He reaches a hand over to squeeze her knee. “Let’s look inside.”

It has only two bedrooms, but there is also an extra room for an office, and a wide living and dining area. Its plumbing is a bit old, its style somewhat outdated, but when they stand together on the porch, they look at each other and they know. They smile. They move toward each other and she rests her head on his chest. He holds her, cupping her shoulder with one hand and her rounded belly with the other.

“I think it’s perfect,” she says.

“Yeah,” he murmurs into her hair. “What’s the little guy think?”

She turns and grins up at him. “He thinks it’ll be a great place to grow up.”

**October, 2005**

The living room window stands half open to let in air that is dry and cool, smelling of dried leaves. She wears a maroon cable-knit sweater and lays across the couch, trying to read. Her legs are in his lap while he watches TV. Mulder draws patterns on her shin with his fingertips, hand tucked under the leg of her pants. The chill makes her shiver. She tingles with its promise, feels something deep inside her cry out to be touched, to be filled.

“Mulder,” she says. His eyes don’t leave the screen, but the sound is muted and he seems only half interested in the old movie.

“Yeah?”

“Come here for a second.”

He looks at her with a confused half-smile, fingers still gripping her skin. “I’m right here,” he says. She licks her lips, coy, holding back her own smile. She shakes her head and raises her arms out to him, tugs at his sleeve with one hand until he turns fully, until he bends to lower his weight over her.

“ _Here_ ,” she says, letting her thighs slip apart so her legs can come around his hips, so she can pull him tight to her and feel the whole of him pressing her to the couch. Her arms come around his neck and he watches her, takes in the flush of her cheeks and the spill of her hair over the cushions _._

“You’re lovely,” he tells her, and her blush deepens. She lifts her hips just a little, just so he feels the heat of her, the need of her body for his.

“I want you,” she says.

His eyes slip closed for a moment and he breathes deeply, pulling in the cool spice of air that brushes their faces, rustles their hair. He offers a subtle thrust of his hips in reply, a quiet acknowledgment and recognition: he wants, too.

The farmhouse is quiet, save the wind chimes that hang from the porch, which sing with the breeze and the crackling dance of dried leaves on the lawn. William is with his grandmother, so for once the day belongs to them alone. There is a slow unbuttoning, a tugging of fabric, her hot breath on his cheek, his lips on hers. They are so so good at this now. Her sweater lands on the hardwood, her bra next, and her nipples stand straight in the chill of the air. He tongues them warm again. She moans, she arches, she tugs at the fabric at his waist.

He strips them both bare, and then they are only two pale bodies in the autumn light, stretched long on the gray canvas of the sofa. She lifts her knees so he can settle between them, touching her cold toes to the muscled small of his back. He shivers and she laughs, and then he’s kissing her again, slipping his hand down her body: breast, waist, hip, knee, and then back up to the apex of her thighs. He groans at how ready she feels, “God, baby, you’re so wet.”

She flushes at the term of endearment and clenches around his fingers, rolls her hips, reaches to take him in her hand. He is hot and smooth and hard under her up-and-down strokes, moaning, pumping his own fingers inside her until she gasps and begs and bucks under him.

“Please, Mulder,” she says, and she guides him to her entrance, says “ohhh” when he pushes inside her.

He kisses her mouth, speaks into it with each thrust. “Dana,” he says. “You’re perfect,” he says. “I love you.”

She swallows each word, holds his face in her hands, and flies with him.

Later, when she will understand by her exhaustion and her persistent sense of fullness that she is pregnant again, she will remember this day and know. She will feel, at the memory, that same tingle in her spine and the sudden need she’d had for him. In the kitchen when he comes home, she will bring his fingers to her belly, press his palm to the still-flat place between her hipbones, and say “Mulder,” and his eyes will go wide and he will grin and he will kiss her hard and swing her around the room. Some part of her, she will think, knew this while it was happening, while they lay with sweat chilling on their bodies in Saturday quiet.

**October, 2006**

Now they are four in this little house that is only just beginning to feel stretched tight. In the yard, William scrapes leaves together into the largest pile he can make, then crashes through it with kicking legs. Mulder watches from the porch, holding his three-month-old daughter in his arms. She fusses, so he bounces her against his chest, kisses the top of her head, hums. She quiets, and her small eyes find his face. When he kisses her nose, she grins, toothless and surprised by the proximity of his features. He blows a puff of air on her dark auburn peachfuzz, and she grins again. “You’re my happy girl,” he tells her.

The front door swings open, and Scully comes out, hair askew, drowsy in her sweatshirt and leggings. She walks to Mulder and rests her head against his bicep. “Hi,” she says. The baby smiles again at the sight of her mother, and Scully rubs a knuckle against the tiny cheek.

“Good nap?” Mulder asks.

“Mm hmm. Perfect.” She goes up on tiptoes to kiss his mouth. “Is she hungry?”

At that moment, the baby fusses again, sensing the proximity of lunch. Mulder and Scully smirk at each other with an “I guess so” expression, and he hands the child over. Scully moves to the porch swing, lifts her sweatshirt, fiddles with her nursing tank, and then there are only the soft snuffles and gulps of the baby eating. He moves to sit as well, and they rock in the quiet gray of the autumn noontime. Scully shifts so she can lean against him. They swing. They listen to William’s triumphant yells in the leaves. Once, the boy scrambles up the stairs to show them that he’s caught a wooly bear, a curled ball of black and brown fuzz in his palm. They smile at him, remind him to be gentle, and watch him run back across the lawn to carefully place the creature at the base of a tree.

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Mulder asks.

She watches the baby eat, holding eye contact with the infant, running a finger over the soft arch of her little brow. “No,” she says. “But I’ll have to be, won’t I?”

Her twelve weeks are up, and tomorrow there will be work again, though only half time at first. “This is the hardest part,” he reminds her. “After tomorrow it will be easier.”

“Yeah,” she says, remembering her first days back at Quantico after William was born. “I just wish today could last forever.”

He rubs circles onto her back, watches the infant’s eyes drift sleepy-closed as she eats. He tickles the little socked feet to keep her awake. “Not yet,” he whispers to her, then kisses Scully’s head. “I know what you mean,” he says.

Scully shifts the baby to her other breast, then settles back against him. He watches, and feels the tug of something in his memory, some remembrance of long ago. A bench in Pennsylvania where the possibility of this moment first entered his mind. Ten years ago, he thinks. How naïve he was then, how stupidly consumed with his own self-flagellation and denial. He thinks of what they’ve made now, in spite of everything.

“But it will be good to get back, too,” Scully muses. “You can use my help. John and Monica can use my help.”

“Always,” he says. Because despite these quiet moments, there are monsters yet. There is darkness at the border of the light they shine into the world, and they have vowed to never give up fighting it. The difference now, he thinks, is that he knows what the good is, too. He knows what is worth struggling for, and when to pull back into the quiet.

The baby has fallen asleep eating again, and he bends to kiss the warm fuzz of her head. Work will come soon enough. Until then, the afternoon stretches long and crisp and slow into the future.


End file.
